Michele Page Websterwe
It’s October. The season shifts. Mother Nature shakes off her mantle of leaves. Spirits stir.
But beware: the Cherokee legend of Spearfinger, a shape-shifting witch with a razor-sharp spike for a finger, lurks at Whiteside Mountain. Her heart pounds in her hand. Nothing beats in her chest, for she is a cold, stone-skin ogress, a mistress of surgical skill.
While witches of the woodlands rouse this time of year, there is a different soul on our Plateau, and she is here nearly year-round. She’s a mistress of painting, a Witch of Wonders, a creator, and a collector of folkloric figures. She is Michele Page Webster.
Her ancestry is a palette of colors as rich as earth, as swirling as sky, as sparkling as the universe. Her parents’ lineage, Majorcan and Cherokee, is deep and respectful of Mother Earth.
Michele feels the finest wonders on our Plateau are free: love, peace, light, spirit, and beauty.
One of her greatest wonders was Lola, her muse, her precious pup of 15 years. She says, “I felt like she understood me, and I her. Every moment and mood felt like we’d been together a lifetime.”
The connection to Lola, wild animals, and spirits bestowed Michele with scores of models for her paintings. Trees and backyard habitat are her condominiums for these jays, woodpeckers, owls, bunnies, and foxes. Their portraits bedeck the walls of many art collectors.
Earlier in life, Michele was an interior decorator. She says, “I didn’t decorate homes with blue, but when I paint a canvas, I am drawn to the blues.” They are water, sky, and colors of nature in the luscious Blue Ridge ‘scapes.
She also favors Santa Fe colors: earth tones. She still has a few paintings, imbued with the holy soil from the western desert.
Those paintings of beauty and magic call you to Bardo Style on Main Street, Highlands. Other viewings are at Instagram: thunderghostridesagain; Facebook: Michele Page, the artist, Page Webster. See her in the 2023 edition of Who’s Who in America; email address: michelepagew@gmail.com and website: pagetheartist.com.
In closing, Michele shares Mother Earth’s plea for preservation of the land. Michele started painting Native American art to honor the Cherokee and help Earth. So raise your spirits and be part of Earth’s rejuvenation with the following:
Microplastics have become our Earth’s Spearfinger. On this All Hallows’ Eve, please pledge against plastic. Its pollution is a slow, invisible, and chronic threat. Find your place in helping Mother Earth’s rejuvenation.
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